On 02/05/12 14:13, nick clifton wrote: > Hi Richard, > >> Well, given the replies from you, Ian and Vlad (when reviewing the patch), >> I feel once again in a minority of one here :-) but... I just don't >> think we should be advertising this sort of stuff to users. > > OK, what about Ian's suggestion of controlling the algorithm selection > via a --param instead of a -f option ? > > >> Not because >> I'm trying to be cliquey, but because any time the user ends up having >> to use stuff like this represents a failure on the part of the compiler. > > A nice idea in principle, but in practice GCC already has a ton of these > specialist options. Maybe you feel that we should not be adding another > one to this list, but I think that we are already too far gone. GCC and > its long list of command line options is an established norm. > > Perhaps now is the time to consider embracing projects like Acovea and > Milepost and making them an official, easier-to-use meta front end to gcc ? > > >> I mean, at what level would we document it? > > Well I rather like David's suggestion - a split gcc invocation manual > with options like -fsched-pressure-algorithm only appearing in the > here-be-dragons section. >
I think we should document the option, stress that it is a new feature and say that it has only been enabled on targets where benchmarking has shown it to be an overall benefit. Finally we should solicit feedback from the community as to whether it makes code better or worse. R.
